“If I must,” answered Joy, and ran through it carelessly.
Then she signed it, and the clerk having witnessed it and been dismissed, Sir Joseph gathered all the papers together, and locked them up. “Business is over for the day,” he said. “I’m going to take a holiday. You will lunch with me at the Ritz, Joy, you and Adrian. I shall take no denial.”
“But there is Babette—” began Joy.
“Oh, we will telephone to her, and pick her up on the way. We shall then be quite a complete little party, and tonight we will dine, and go on to a theatre afterwards. You will not have seen much acting, of late—”
“None at all,” laughed Joy, “for three whole years.”
“Then we must certainly go,” answered her uncle. “Let me see—ah, yes! There is the ‘Grizzly Cub,’ a Klondyke play, pure American and very strenuous and exciting. I have seen it once, but I should like to see it again, with some one who knows the country of the play. To me it seems very real, and if it has illusions for you who know the life, I shall know that it is really good. We will go there. Adrian, just tell Benson to ring up the Mitre and engage a box for me, and have my car brought round from the garage.”
It was a merry party that lunched at the Ritz. There was not a hint of the care that had betrayed itself in the lawyer’s face in the solitude of his private room. He was the gay, debonair man of the world that all his acquaintances knew, and he exerted himself to make the lunch an agreeable one. But from time to time, he allowed his eyes to stray towards a table where a couple of young men were lunching with a lady. They seemed very interested in his own party, and presently he saw the lady rise from her seat and walk towards his table. At the same moment Joy Gargrave looked up, and as she caught the young lady’s eyes, started impulsively from her seat.
“You, Penelope!” she cried.
“You, Joy!” mimicked the other. “I thought you were dwelling in the forest primeval?”
“I arrived in London last night. I expect to stay a little time in England. The years of what my uncle calls my exile are over.” She glanced at the lawyer. “Do you know my uncle? No! Then I must introduce you. Uncle, this is Miss Penelope Winter, an old—”